Float On
by FrostedFire
Summary: He doesn't know where they're going, and he doesn't care. Luna will tell him when they should stop, and she had a sixth sense about all of that anyway. They'd end up finding some road stop diner that proved to be better than anything else that they had ever had. THEO x LUNA; Road Trip AU.


**Author's Note:** Happy Sunday! Written for Hogwarts School Challenges 'Tri-Wizard Tournament'. For Angel!

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FLOAT ON

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"Do you ever feel like the world's just waiting to swallow you whole?" she asks, and Theo whips his head around to look at her, uncertain. He feels like he never knows what she means, like he's fruitlessly trying to translate words with some basic knowledge, a starting Greek student attempting to read _The Iliad_ in the original words.

She doesn't seem disturbed by this; she never seems upset when she has to explain herself to him, but then again, she doesn't ever make it better. She just keeps talking, the words twisting around and floating until they hit the sky. Questions and statements float loftily towards the ceiling, curling around like smokey creatures as they touched the sky.

"I feel…" She trails off, slightly, tasting the words in her mouth as she leans back into the leather seats of the car. He once told her it was fake leather just to stop her from tearing up, but she had been more furious at his words than the attempt. "I feel like the world has seen my future and intends on dragging it out as far as it can."

Theo always feels lame in comparison. He can never can make the words come out the right way. He doesn't have the poeticism of Luna, he has stagnant words without meaning. "Oh," he says, and he knows that his face is blank and his eyes only briefly flash the guilt that he feels. He isn't like Luna. He doesn't see the world in misty color, he sees it in shades of black and white and grey, he sees things as they are and as they should be. Luna sees them as they wish they were— at least, that was how he attempted to explain it to his friends.

"You don't need to pretend to understand, Theodore," she informs him, and it's the clearest thing she's said all morning. All at once he recalls the first time that they met, the words that they'd exchanged in their Art History class, the way that she had so seriously destroyed every argument that he had made. "You know how I feel about liars."

She hated liars, he knew that. They were the only people that she discriminated against, the only people that she jutted out her chin at. She hated liars, she hated the way that people could so cruelly twist around their words.

She had hated him, too.

He was a liar and he knew it. Theo was the son of a politician, he was close friends with Draco Malfoy, and two of his best friends were notorious for cheating, lying, and gambling: Marcus always cheated at lacrosse and Blaise always lied to women.

He didn't know when she stopped hating him.

He didn't know why she stopped hating him.

Maybe she did still hate him.

"I'm sorry," he tells her, and he turns his head away from the road for just a second, his hands still steady on the wheel. "You know how I feel about talking."

He thinks that's why they partnered together, once, during a project. He had told her that he didn't want to speak in front of the class, that he didn't want to speak in general (" _I don't do talking"_ ), and she had simply nodded and immediately taken over.

Luna is never hesitant. She leaps and moves and smiles, and Theo always feels like he's falling behind.

"You know…"

He looks back to the road, scanning the icy pavement. They were on their way home from class, just like normal. In their freshman year the drive would have been tense, awkward. It was a convenience only because they lived next to one another and Luna had broken her ankle so Flint had ordered him to drag her around. Now, though, it was a comfortable routine.

Luna, with her cigarette dangling out the window, cool air pouring into his car, laughs. "We should run away."

He isn't sure what he expected her sentence to be, but that wasn't it. That was different, that was something… That was Luna.

"Where?"

She quirks her head to the side, the round sunglasses on her face glinting in the sun. "Somewhere homework can't follow us."

"I still have a paper due later," Theo informs her, and he shakes his head. "Coach'll kill me if I fail that."

He glances in the mirror, changes lanes, and then looks towards Luna. Her lips were pursed, smoke pushed out. "Somewhere homework can't follow us," she repeats, nodding her head. "Besides, you finished that earlier. I was with you."

He sighs. She hates lying, and he can't stop lying to her. "Sorry," he says again, and she arches a brow, but her lips and eyes are smiling. "Marcus'll kill me."

"I'll ask him not to. He likes me best, anyway."

Theo snorts. "That's only because you're related to his boyfriend," he insists. "He would hate you otherwise. You don't know anything about lacrosse."

She doesn't say anything for a moment, and he doesn't argue, nor does he pull into the turning lane so that they can go home. Running away… That sounded good. That sounded better than anything else they were planning to do that afternoon.

It sounded cathartic, like he could get away from everything all at once, he could eliminate stress and anxieties just by getting out. No dad. No school. No friends. No dad/school/work/friends/homework pressing down on his back, breathing heavily as they attempted to mold him into something he didn't want to be.

He can just _hear_ every single one of those things attempting to claw him back into their clutches. He could just hear the shouts of surprise from his father when he sees pale Luna, laughing into the moonlight, and Theo, standing solemnly next to her.

He thinks that he would go anywhere if she asked him to.

"Somewhere homework can't follow us," he mumbles, looking towards Luna with a small smile. She seems euphoric, almost, and then sad. He wonders why, but he knows she'll say, at some point. She doesn't keep secrets from people.

"Am I pushing you too far?"

He shrugs his large shoulders, looking again at the road. "No." He's hesitant; he always hesitates around people. Theo is so used to be being wrong and bad, he's so used to being told that he wouldn't amount to anything. "No, you aren't. This'll be good. I want a break."

"You need a break," she corrects, taking another drag of the cigarette. "You're too tightly wound. Your coil is going to break, Theodore."

She never calls him Theo. She always has to change things, has to make them her own. He thinks that he would appreciate it if the circumstances were different, if his dad didn't share the same name. But he hadn't told her, so he bore the similarities well.

He turns back to the road, then, not in dismissal but in acknowledgement, and Luna goes back to detailing everything that they see. Each tree, each person, each car doesn't escape from her, and she gives them backstories and families and connections to everything.

Theo concentrates on making sure they don't skid, his heart in his throat. At least he has new tires, at least he has four-wheel drive. They should be fine to make it anywhere, what with his new fancy car that Draco had cast off on him.

"Do you see those people over there?"

Her voice lilts carefully, and Theo takes a risk, glancing over where she was pointing. Two heavy set individuals, one small, focused girl. He thinks that the girl is a Weasley just by the glance of her bright red hair— there were seven of them, he thinks, but one died in a car accident.

"I see them," he tells her, glad that they've pulled up at a stoplight. He knows that she would just keep discussing them, and it was always better to have a vague idea of what she's going on about.

She's still toying with the cigarette, and her voice is bright as she talks about them in detail. "In another world, they would be fighting against each other, I know it. Flashes of green and white and red… People are tied so loosely to this world. We'll fly away if we thought too hard about it."

"How do you not?"

She seems thoughtful, for a moment. "I think I have."

He laughs, lightly, and she joins him a moment later, dropping the cigarette out the window and finally, briefly, relieving them of the smell of smoke and frustration.

He thinks that she's like this because her mother was. Then, he thinks that she's like this because nobody else is, because she needs someone to ground her and she needs to float away. But Theo knows that's wishful thinking. He needs her, he needs her because she is light and free and unfocused. She doesn't need him, all stern words and the desperate need to prove something, anything.

She continues to tell him about things around them, always straying from describing her life and her past, just like he did. And Theo kept driving, and when they were running low on gas he stops to get some, barely paying attention to the road signs, always shifting lanes when Luna instructs it.

He doesn't know where they're going, and he doesn't care. Luna will tell him when they should stop, and she had a sixth sense about all of that anyway. They'd end up finding some road stop diner that proved to be better than anything else that they had ever had.

For now he was content to just follow wherever she decided they were going, he was fine with driving towards nowhere. He had the money for gas. He had the right company. He wanted a break.

He needed a break.

"How much longer?" he asks her, grimacing when someone pulls out in front of them. They're on some seedy road, now, one winding up a mountain. He thinks that they're in Pennsylvania, but he isn't too sure.

She runs a hand through her blonde hair, and he notices how how out of the corner of his eye she seems more focused, calculating.

He thinks that it's strange to see her like that.

He doesn't think he wants to see her like that again.

"Turn here," she says, and he gets off at the next exit. It wasn't really an exit, it was just a turn towards one of the many look-offs on the mountain. The road is mainly gravel, and he's wincing as they drive, attempting to move even slower than normal. He's cautious, just like normal. It's so slick that the car could fall off, and Theo thinks that might be a poetic way to go, but not then.

It's slow going, for a bit, a creeping pace that put them on another path. She waits until he slows to a stop before opening the door to the Range Rover, slipping out and crashing into the snow. "Come on, Theodore," she exclaims, her lips pulling into a grin. "I know exactly where we need to go."

They pick their way across the ice and snow, her sneakers and his boots crunching in the fresh powder. Luna was whooping like a child, giggling and scooping up snow as they stepped. She seems excited to be there, and Theo finally feels like he can take a breath. For once in his life, he feels calm. "Where?"

She leads him to a little cliff, feeling around gently to see if they could sit without falling. It's almost like she's done it before, like she had previously come up on the mountain to just sit and think. Luna sits herself down and makes some room for him, smiling. "Here," she says, patting. "Come sit. It's beautiful here."

It was. The world beneath them was fanned out, colors spreading out beneath them. There was a bit of fog, a bit of smoke... "It is."

"You don't have to talk," she tells him, leaning her head onto his shoulder. He's almost relieved that she didn't take out another cigarette. It would ruin the picturesque grounds beneath them. "Why don't you like your name?"

He tries not to shrug, but it happens anyway. "It's my father's name." He doesn't want to say more than that, and Luna doesn't make him. He knows she can tell, just from his posture, how he really feels.

"That's why you go by Theo," she repeats. "I'm very sorry. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

She sounds sincere, so Theo forgives her, but in his own way. He places his hand on the small of her back, breathing out gently. "It's fine. You didn't know, anyway."

"You don't like to talk about yourself," she says, and she looks out over the mountain, sighing. That was true, at least. Neither of them talked about their lives or their family, neither of them mentioned their parents or lack thereof. "I don't, either."

He snorts. "We're a pair of messed up kids, huh?"

She laughs, shifting slightly, and they talk some more. They cover everything that they had tried to ignore, just sitting out over the edge. He manages to discuss his mother's death, how it was probably his fault. He talks about how he misses his mom, how his dad had pushed him away. She finally brings up her own family, her father's addiction and her mother's death. Their knees press together and they try not to shiver too hard.

"Could you do something for me, Theo?"

"Yeah," he says, looking down at the ground below them.

"Could you move over a little more?" she asks.

Theo arches a brow. "If I move any more I'll fall." They're too close to the edge, they'll fall. His heart is already in his throat as it is, what with talking about things he didn't even say to Blaise.

"...Just a little?"

He looks towards her in confusion, shaking his head. "Luna, I mean it. I'll fall off the mountain."

Her eyes are wide, and she moves to face him. "Metaphorically. Can you move over a bit? And fall?" He still seems confused, and she lets out a little sigh. "In love, Theo."

He nods slowly, and she breaks into a beautiful smile.

"Oh, good," she murmurs, looking out over the mountain. "We'll float on, then. You know, this is the best road trip that I think I've been on."


End file.
